Laughing Brutality in Woman's Flogging Video Chills Sudan

Flogging of Sudanese women in Khartoum from Anne Enke on Vimeo.

The horror of flogging in Sudan reared its head this week in a video that’s no less riveting in its inhumanity than the details of Lubna Hussein’s indencency hearings that went on for months in 2009. For new readers at Anne of Carversville, I became very involved in Lubna’s case in the summer of 2009, after being contacted by a loosely-confederated group of concerned men in the region.

My closest ally in that 2009 group returned to Facebook this week and contacted me with the video that frankly causes me nightmares. I have played this video over and over in my head awake and asleep.

There aren’t words to express my revulsion at the administering of ‘justice’ Sudan style to this young woman and the 40,000 more that will probably be flogged in 2010, based on Sudanese court records of 40,000 floggings in 2008.

Nesrine Malik wrote about the flogging for The Guardian today: Sudan’s public order laws are about control, not morality.

After being pulled down repeatedly on YouTube, with complaints coming fast and furious from the believers in flogging episodes like this one, the video is now alive. It is also on CNN and Al Jazeera, says my friend, although I can’t find it in the international editions.

I will share my colleague’s words, written from the region for Anne of Carversville readers:

This video clip depicts the scene of a Sudanese girl receiving blows whip all over her body at a police station in Khartoum this week. A wave of condemnation by the Sudanese on the Internet and newspapers concluded that what happened was exceeding the legal punishment and amounted to physical torture and severe humiliation.

The film shows the police carrying out the punishment of flogging with a whip on the Sudanese girl in front of a crowd of people. The Girl received blows whip all over her body from the legs, back, arms and head wildly and violently. The girl was crying and lying on the ground squirming in pain, begging the policeman to stop hitting her, before another officer assisted him and participated in the beating.

It appears through the person who filmed the scene, if not one of the policemen, he should be well known to them.

Hundreds of responses to the sites and electronic forums on the World Wide Web described the incident heinous and barbaric crime, and condemned (it) in the name of Islam and Shariah.

Repeated complaints of citizens in the Sudan from the excesses of the police and the power of the public order police to arrest people and bring them to trial on various charges. This confirms what happened recently when public order policemen arrested a group of men involved in the fashion show, bringing them to trial and convicting them.

Lubna Ahmed Hussein, a journalist from Sudan in an earlier meeting with the media said that the trials of public order print minimalism, where the accused does not get a chance to defend him/ herself, is what happened to her also. And that all procedures are performed on the same day of the hearing, trial and execution.

Lubna said, “that the painful thing is the silence of women who are subjected to beatings and humiliation by the police for fear of scandal, because the community is always blamed on the woman victim, not the executioner”.

Many Sudanese surveyed by some newspapers about their opinions of the video, concluded that the Sudanese government is using Islamic law and public order police to suppress and intimidate people, including ownership of tools such as the General Security Service, who exercise the arrest and (then)torture to intimidate political opponents.

They, unanimously, agreed that the next referendum in Southern Sudan and the possibility of separation may be a reason for the government of Sudan trying to tighten its grip on society and the street to block any resistance to the government of Omar al-Bashir, who was charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court.

Islamic law has been applied for the first time in the Sudan under the regime of former dictator Jaafar Nimeiri in 1983, following a popular uprising in Sudan in April 1985 the Sudanese parties failed to agree on the abolition of Islamic laws. Following the coup, the National Islamic Front, led by President Omar al-Bashir has been working on all levels to turn Sudan into an Islamic country.

NBC News Ann Curry & Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir; Photo by Antoine Sanfuentes, NBC NewsNBC’s Ann Curry wrote about Sudan in 2007 and interviewed Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. A week ago Ann Curry was back in Sudan with Goerge Clooney, in advance of elections scheduled for January 2011. As Curry explains, there are grave concerns that Sudan will devolve into a state of civil war if Sudan is split into two countries. See ‘Winds of War: George Clooney in Sudan’.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 From George Clooney’s website Sudan Now:

George Clooney: Endgame in Sudan